Red Velvet Sundays...

I cannot even begin to describe my love for cupcakes

.ESPECIALLY.

 Red Velvet cupcakes

They are the greatness to my day and the bane to my love handles!

A good friend of mine lives in Texas and she's been taking some photoshop classes from me so as a thank you she sent me a box of cupcakes...
she knows me all too well.

I saved the Red Velvet cupcake for 4 days for the PERFECT moment

sunday afternoon

E is down for a nap

Brandon is watching the game out on the sofa

so I sneak away to my bedroom with a chick flick, a glass of milk

and this fabulous piece of pastry...

.bliss.

Europe 2012!

One of the things I am most grateful for in my life is what we (The Andersons) do "as a family" 

We don't boat

 We don't jeep

We don't camp much

We TRAVEL!

I have had so many amazing experiences in my life thanks to my parents and I could probably never do anything or thank them enough to make up for what they've given me with the trips we go on.

They have made it a priority to get our family out of our comfort zones and to as many foreign countries as we can see before we get too old and our knees give out on us ;)

In my fine art classes in college, I had been to MOST of the architectural landmarks we discussed and have stood in front of the rarest art pieces in the world!

I will be forever grateful to my parents who have spent the time and money to make sure all of us see the world with them. 

I know someday my kids will get tired of me telling them about all of my adventures over and over! 

about getting lost in Venice for an entire day

seeing Rome at 2 a.m cause my mom didn't want to go to sleep yet!

Almost getting kicked out of the Endinburgh Scotland Castle with Natalie

Riding Donkeys up the side of a volcano is Mykonos Greece

Going to EVERY Pride & Prejudice site we could find!

About my mom passing kidney stones in Russia and my dad and I having to navigate a russian subway system all alone!

I have so many memories of my siblings on these trips as well.

We got along (ish) when we were little but we REALLY grew close on these trips.

Most of my favorite memories of my siblings are in foreign countries now that I think about it!

Natalie going INSANE in the car while driving from Whales to Scottland and back to London.

Ryan barking out the car window at unsuspecting Vespa riding Italians while stuck in traffic in Florence

ha ha ha ha ha

.Good times.

 My parents decided since this would probably be the last time ALL of us could go on a big family vacation ALL together we'd go out with a bang!

Now announcing the agenda for the 

ANDERSON FAMILY 2012 FAMIY VACATION!!!

We leave July 9th and I'm DYING!
Egypt is a bucket list item for me and Brandon!
Thats probably mostly what i'm excited about...
I've been to a few of these places before and I can't WAIT to take Brandon to them!
He's never been to Europe and London is like home away from home for me!

July seriously can't come fast enough!!

A LONG 3 weeks... and special announcement!!!!

Well Evie took her FIRST plane ride the other day! 

Brandon, Evie, Me and my Mom all flew out to Kirksville MO, to visit my sister and brother-in-law!

Evie loved the plane ride!

...

okay she loved that there were people behind her and in front of her that played with her the entire trip

While we were in Kirksville Evie took a big step!

{literally}

SHE LEARNED HOW TO WALK!

9 months old and walking like a champ! 

Our kids a genius!

 While we were there Brandon took off with Joe and did "man things"

Ping Pong, Watched Man Flicks, played pool

and what man week would be complete with out sitting in on a couple of surgeries..

Joe is in his 3rd year of Medical School so Brandon went with him to some of his surgeries

Meanwhile...

The girls stayed back at the house and sewed our little hearts out!

nat and I made 

baby blankets 

baby slings

fixed joes sunday clothes

a purse

and more!

We helped Nat plant new flowers in her beds around her cute little house

 She took a couple of hours to pull out this MASSIVE weed!!! 

yes in the pic on the right

.that.is.a.weed.

We had a couple of fun dinners, one of which was a little picnic of shiscabobs out in the backyard

we were there for a total of 9 days but our trip wasn't over yet...

..........................................

Brandon has spent the last year interviewing at Medical Schools and he has FINALLY picked one!!

I would like to announce that in June the Valantine Trio will be moving to....

Brandon has chosen to attend Medical School at Rocky Vista University in Parker Colorado!

I am so happy for him!

We went out to Colorado to find a house to buy with absolutely ZERO luck

The housing market in Denver is CRAZY good still and you literally cannot find a house to buy there.

So  long story short it was a LONG 5 days of mostly 

this....

{In the car all day}

 This crazy gal was SO GLAD to get home to St. George!

even though..

guess what?!

our air conditioning is out AGAIN this summer!

go figure. 

This week was Aunt Dani's birthday so we went and played Tennis

see... in Salt Lake when it's 97 degrees outside, we go to the lake

in St. George when it's 97 degrees outside, they go play tennis at noon?....

Me and E hung out in the shade :)

and then we went to Walmart where we found this kiddie pool for 7$!

.fabulous.

Evie was in heaven!

I could barely get her out of it when she started shaking for the sun going down!

It's getting so hot in St. George already I can't believe it! 

Moving day is also rapidly approaching and we have so much we need to do before then!

(lake powell)

xo, Meg

Spring Break Part 2

Brandon has been playing in this softball league this spring and it's been fun to go and watch his games. 

. Evie of course loves getting to be outside and sociable .

 

Brandon of course has already injured himself more times than I want to admit to lol

...as for the rest of our spring break...

The ENTIRE Valantine family (including the dogs) went for a red rock hike up by Gunlock Res. 

It was so nice to get some sun and some exercise! 

I was so glad to get charley out of the house too!

That dog has been driving us nuts with needing to always have the attention over the baby!

She thinks she's a baby too.

.sheesh.

Matt (my Father-In-Law) went out and got a rock crawler...

.....

Our family and the McAllisters wanted to go out jeeping on saturday and climb up to a cliff to watch the Southern Utah Air Show.

(It's the one with the Blue Angel jets that fly way close together)

I was hesitant because my father-in-law thinks he's Evel Knievel sometimes..  

after one week of coaxing I FINALLY agreed to let Evie go on this outing 

AS LONG 

as Matt agreed upon and followed precisely the terms I laid out :)

 We went and we had a blast!

Matt did great and followed all the rules ;)

I'd go again in a heart beat!

  Our neighbors, Alli and Kc brought their jeep and came out for some fun that day too

 The air show was AMAZING!!

We were really far from the airport so the jets would fly over the airport and then go out and do a U turn to go back to the airport so whenever they flew out to turn around they'd be RIGHT in front of the cliff we were on! It was NUTS!

And of course i'm an idiot and didn't bring my SLR!

These were taken from our little 90$ point and shoot so that kinda shows how close they were!

It was so fun to hang out with the family all week!

They all work, go to school or live in Cedar City so we never get to do fun things like this all together!

What a blast!

Well tomorrow Evie is going on her FIRST plane ride!

My Mom, Brandon and I are going out to Missouri to visit my sheeshter!

yahoo!!

more to come on that!

xo, Meg

Spring Break so far...

I got a really great full time job opportunity last week so Brandon gets to quit his job and come home and be Mr. Mom! 

YAHOO!

I've been looking forward to this literally for  years!

Brandon is always so busy, he's always working, he's always studying, he's always doing something.

 I feel like he never gets to come on trips with me (and if he does he has to stay in the hotel and study),

 he never gets to go do fun things with our families, 

and he never gets to do anything that he really wants to do!

 so I was MORE than happy to take a full time job so that he could have the next few months before Medical School to be a free man! 

And so far the turnout has been great

His last day of work was last Saturday and this week is spring break so we've already gotten away to do some fun things.

On Sunday night Brandons dad said

"Hey we should go to Vegas tomorrow!"

so 25 minutes later our hotel was booked and we were at home packing

(Thats one thing i LOVE about my father-in-law! he's way spontaneous  and always follows through!)

We mostly went down to hang out at the pool so we booked our room at the fabulous 

Mandalay Bay because they're pool is like a beach!

.Evie of course LOVED the sand and the pool.

I loved that Brandon was there and SLEEPING on a lounge chair!

Not up in the hotel

not doing homework

not reading a text book

SLEEPING!

My mom loaned me Jareds old "Mom Rigg" :)

So Evie and I have been going on lots of bike rides lately!

It's spring in St. George already and I LOVE it!!

I honestly never want to move anywhere cold ever again!

A few nights ago we went on a date night with a bunch of our good friends from Brandons (old) work!

We were going to go bowling but it was league night so we headed over to the batting cages at Fiesta Fun!

This was my first time EVER batting at something and I did WAY better than I thought I was going to!

We let Evie crawl all over the ground out by the cages and get filthy so when we went back inside to the arcade to play air hockey we just let her have at all the kiddie playground stuff

Her FAVORITE new thing is the slide!

(pardon the hat hair)

This little slide was like 3 feet long so she could go down it all by herself

and she went CRAZY!

as soon as she was down the slide she was back up and trying to climb back up it again

She'd get overly anxious at the top and accidentally front flip and tumble all the way down and she'd 

STILL 

want to get back up and go to the top again!

It was hilarious!

Well spring break still isn't' over! 

I think today we're going on a hike with Brandons family and I can't wait!

More pictures to come on that 

until then

xo, Meg

UT NV AZ and back

This month has been CRAZY! We started off the month up in SLC for a couple of shoots

then back down to St. George for my 24th BIRTHDAY!

.man i'm old.

then we came home and headed off to Arizona for Brandons birthday/ Valentines Day AND a medical school interview!

We were leaving on a sunday and Evie learned to crawl that morning! 

(I think I already told that story in my last post but here are some pics from the day she learned)

Brandons Interview went great and he was accepted to Midwestern YAHOOO!!

*this school is my top choice for obvious reasons*

We spent Brandons birthday / Valentines Day hanging out on the sofa while Evie slept on us. 

It was just what we needed though.

We both work a LOT so we never get to just sit together anymore.

After that Evangeline gave us lots and lots of face kisses (attacks)

and then we went to Brandons FAVORITE restaurant of all time!

It's the little tiny place in the middle of an asian strip mall but it tastes JUST like Taiwanese food!

We got home from Arizona and 2 days later I took off to Las Vegas for a conference

This year I got invited to attend WPPI

.Wedding & Portrait Photographers International.

and it was AMAZING!

I met so many famous photographers

and attended so many awesome classes!

I went down with 4 other girls and I couldn't have loved being in their group more!

I could gush on and on but I won't bore you guys :)

I'll go into more detail about WPPI on my photography blog later this week.

.anyway.

My conference ended on Wednesday so Brandon drove down with Evie and he flew out Wednesday afternoon to his next interview in Des Moines.

On Thursday my mom and brother came down for Jareds soccer tournament!

He didn't have games until Saturday so we hit up the pool side ALL WEEKEND!

It was amazing to have sun on my skin! 

Last year I hardly went outside cause I was either 9 months pregnant or I had a new born and it was 100 degrees every day down here in St. George.

Evie is A FISH!!!

You can't GET that girl out of the water!

She loves the pool, she loves the hot tub, she loves the bath tub!

(and as of 30 minutes ago the toilet bowl.... 

note to self: close all toilet bowls from now on...)

This girl is into EVERYTHING!

She is the most mischievous little thing i've ever seen!

I was having fun taking pictures of her all morning and then I lost my model to the Hot Dog Dance...

I don't know what it is about that song but as SOON as that song comes on every bit of her focus goes directly to Mickey Mouse?...

Anyways.
thats it for today!
E and I are going to go for a bike ride now
:)

Xo, Meg

Time To Lower Our Standards :)

This month has been CRAZY!!

For the entire month of February I will be home a total of 10 days! 

We've been up to SLC for weddings and other shoots

down to Arizona for a medical school interview and Brandons birthday

next week we're off to vegas for a Photography Conference

and then I STAY in Vegas for the rest of the week for my little brothers soccer tournament 

while Brandon goes to Des Moines for his LAST interview!

.sheesh.

My little girls sleep schedule is ALL OVER the place!

We worked 6 months for a routine all to blow it in one month ha ha ha 

.oh well.

life goes on

In other news!

It's officially time to lower the crib!

This gal pulls herself up on EVERYTHING!

She climbs up the TV stand, the sofa, the table, your leg, the bed, my desk, my chair, she even attempts to stand up on Charley! 

and guess what!? She CRAWLS NOW!!

She learned the morning we were heading out the door for Arizona!

I feel so bad because Brandon missed the first time she rolled and the day she learned to sit up because he was at work so I was SO EXCITED he was home for this!!

I was blow drying my hair out in the living room while Brandon was in the shower and I set my brush on the floor and she totally took a step towards it!

I jumped up and ran into the bathroom

B SHE'S CRAWLING!!! SHE CRAWLING COME NOW!!!!!

So he jumps out of the shower (grabs a towel) and comes BOLTING into the living room!

She thought it was peek-a-boo or something when he came around the corner so she started laughing and crawling towards him!! It was awesome!

We honestly never thought she'd crawl before she walked!

{sorry to all those who think stories like that are not nearly as awesome as we mammas think they are!

 ha ha ha I used to skip right passed  posts like these when I didn't have Evie so it's okay if you did too}

Upcoming Family Posts

Arizona/ Brandons Birthday / Valentines Day

Vegas Conference / Weekend with my Mamma

My birthday (yes that was clear back in January)

Upcoming Photography Posts

Wing Wedding

Conrad Bridals

Yellowhorse Bridals

Janelle Bridals

{yikes i'm behind...}

ALSO! Great News! 

My camera that broke 3 months ago is FINALLY FIXED!!!

No more using this stinkin' camera with the soft focus!!

xo, Meg